Agusa, Swedish Progressive Rock collective formed in 2013, releases “Panacea” on May 22, 2026 via Karisma Records — their fourth live album, a record that documents a powerful performance at the Progressive Circus Festival in Malmö on September 28, 2024. Three tracks drawn from different chapters of the band’s discography: two from the self-titled “Agusa” (2017) and one from the most recent studio album “Prima Materia” (2023). Three songs, forty-five minutes. Mixed by Michael Miño and mastered by Magnus Lindberg — whose credits include Cult of Luna, Dina Ögon, and Crippled Black Phoenix — the album captures the heat of the live performance without sacrificing clarity or depth. What has always defined Agusa in the retro-Progressive landscape is the specificity of their sonic DNA. Their palette draws equally from the pastoral Folk traditions of Scandinavia, the Psychedelic expansionism of early-’70s European Prog, and the Jazz technique — all filtered through a strictly analogue instrumentation that gives their music an organic weight. On “Panacea,” that identity is not merely preserved — it is magnified. The opening applause of the audience gives way to “Lust Och Fägring (Sommarvisan) (Live),” lifted from “Prima Materia” (2023). The interplay between Jenny Puertas‘ flute, Roman Andrén‘s rigorously analogue keyboards, Mikael Ödesjö‘s guitar, and the rhythmic engine of Simon Ström and Nicolas Difonis is as precise as it is organic. The track navigates a landscape between Scandinavian Psych-Prog and Jazz-inflected passages, with a melodic sensibility that captures the listener immediately and holds across its fourteen-minute arc. The performance honours the studio original while adding the warmth and immediacy that only a live room can generate — flute and organ predominant, a groove-driven, elaborately articulated rhythm section underneath. An opener that establishes the emotional register of the entire record. The centrepiece of “Panacea” is where the album earns its most extraordinary chapter. “Den Förtrollade Skogen (Live)” began its life as an eight minutes track on “Agusa” (2017). In Malmö, the band pushes it past the twenty-minute mark through an extended central section of Psychedelic and Progressive Rock expansion. Jenny Puertas and Roman Andrén use the harmonic skeleton of the original as a launchpad, trading lysergic solos that reference the pastoral Prog vocabulary of the ’70s with an energy and dynamism that belong to the present. The flute and organ sustain a concentrated dialogue across a shifting rhythmic canvas before the band recalibrates, drawing the audience in through a percussive interlude that places Nicolas Difonis in sharp focus. The final movement restores the interplay of flute, guitar and keyboards above a weighty, load-bearing bassline, with the organ ascending toward a conclusion that is both lysergic and unmistakably Progressive in its melodic resolution. This is the track that defines “Panacea“: a demonstration of what the current Agusa lineup delivers when given room. The album closes with “Ur Askan (Live),” which in its studio form opened the self-titled “Agusa” record. Here the band reveals its most distinctive compositional signature: Swedish pastoral Folk, harmonic minor scales drawn from Arabic and Persian music traditions, and classic Hammond-driven Progressive Rock converge into what the band themselves have described as “a universal prayer, a plea for forgiveness.” Jenny Puertas‘ vocal, reciting that prayer in Spanish, carries a concentrated pathos that lifts the performance beyond the purely musical. Flute and Hammond weave into something almost meditative — Raga-Rock in spirit — before the band drives the final section home through an explosive Progressive Rock crescendo of interlocking guitar, Hammond and flute above a propulsive rhythm section. The ovation that closes the record is fully earned. A fourth live album from a band whose stylistic authority has only deepened with time. “Panacea” is not a souvenir of a concert — it is a document. The flute is not an ornament in Agusa‘s music: in Puertas‘ hands it is a primary voice, threading through the complex instrumental architecture as both lyrical extension and Melodic counterpoint. The seventies references embedded in the band’s sound are real and deliberate, but the band has shaped that inheritance into something with a distinct personal identity — tradition not as constraint, but as the fuel of their own idiom. Three epic tracks in live form, a band that genuinely moves the listener from the first note to the closing ovation, transmitting the full essence of Scandinavian Progressive Rock with the authority of a lineup that knows exactly what it has to say.
Tracklist
01. Lust Och Fägring (Sommarvisan) (Live) (14:33)
02. Den Förtrollade Skogen (Live) (20:42)
03. Ur Askan (Live) (10:38)
Lineup
Jenny Puertas / Flute, Vocals
Mikael Ödesjö / Guitar
Roman Andrén / Keyboards
Simon Ström / Bass
Nicolas Difonis / Drums, Percussion, Vocals